Taking the Highway by M.H. Mead

moving.”
    Andre popped his head above the car. Oliver was nowhere near the purple Octave. He’d moved two lanes over and was in consultation with the driver of a gray Ford.
    Andre ran to Oliver and grabbed his arm. “I told you to start over there.”
    Oliver shook him off. “The Octave is full of panicked grandmothers. There’s no way they’re leading this train. Whoever goes first has to go fast and everyone has to follow or it stays chaos.” He pointed to the Ford, which was crammed with high-schoolers, the smallest one behind the wheel. This was his leader? “Stuart here loves to drive and knows what to do.”
    “This isn’t fucking driver’s ed!”
    “I know.” Oliver tapped the Ford’s roof. “Go, Stuart.”
    “Yes, sir.” The Ford peeled backward and turned sharply on its radius to head the wrong way on the highway. Oliver signaled with both hands to the minivan in front of it, as if he were parking a jet. The minivan began to move and was soon following Stuart’s Ford. The next car was undrivable, with a smashed front end, so they left it and helped the cars on either side. People were paying attention now, glad that someone had a plan, and needed few instructions to get into position. Even the granny Octave was able to drive through the rain once it had a clear path to follow. But moving one car at a time was painfully slow.
    The dispatcher clicked into his implant. “I’ve got an ambulance five minutes out.”
    “What about oncoming traffic?”
    “About five minutes after that. If we’re lucky.”
    “I need more time. You’ve got to stop traffic completely before Livernois so I can get these people safely off the highway.”
    “We’re trying.”
    “Any update on those kids?”
    “Negative. Nothing new.”
    Andre hopped out of the way of an Octave Quartet just in time to avoid getting his toes run over. “What about a copter to pull them?”
    “Have you seen where you are? No helicopter can get into a narrow canyon like that. Look, just move cars, okay? Move them.”
    “Working on it.” Andre clicked out. He signaled the next car in line and looked for Oliver. He seemed to be shifting twice as many cars as Andre was, with fewer words and less expansive gestures. Oliver didn’t have the charm of a fourth or the authority of a cop. So how was he doing it? Of course, that was the secret of leadership. Oliver had always had the aura of someone with his shit together, and that’s all it took for people to listen to him. Andre wondered if Oliver could move cars alone while he took the Raven back to Livernois. He’d like to keep them from getting slammed with traffic approaching the accident site from the outburbs. But it was useless for one man to try to stop six lanes of oncoming cars. All they could do was move as many cars as they could, and hope that dispatch gave him a head’s up before the onslaught.
    Oliver had reached a critical mass of undrivable cars, so he backtracked his steps and worked one lane over, stopping some cars from moving too soon, gesturing others to go ahead.
    Andre picked his way further up the line, hoping to find a clear path of unwrecked cars. Over the sound of the pounding rain, he heard the wail of sirens. About time. He took a deeper breath, hoping that the worst was over.
    Ahead of him, he saw a young man and woman waving arms above their heads like drowning people. The man frantically signaled Andre while the woman pointed one hand at the car. This must be the family. He was close. So was the ambulance. Three, maybe four cars and they’d have it. He nodded his rain-soaked head emphatically and gestured toward the approaching emergency vehicles, receiving a grateful thumbs-up from a terrified father.
    More sirens cut through the storm. Andre knew that sound. Black and whites. At last.
    [ ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ]
    Andre clicked in. “Thanks.”
    “Ambulances?”
    He squinted through the rain to see Oliver directing the first one through.